Dreamcatcher Events

Worked with Ann on a few other events recently and it just cemented my previous experience with her. She is extremely skilled and detail oriented. She turns every event into a beautiful affair to remember!

As a professional photographer and have worked with Ann I always thought how smooth things flowed with her taking care of details. Organized and and always on top of things.
When my daughter was married in May 2013 we were lucky that Ann Saavedra was on board.
Ann only wants it to be one of the most happiest days of your life.
Details and getting things done so the bride wont worry why the salad is not there or when is the first dance. She is a lovely person and I highly recommend her to all my clients.

Ann is absolutely fantastic! She made our wedding day go so smoothly and took care of everything from setting up the room, coordinating with al our vendors, ensuring our timeline went well throughout the event, to staying hours after the wedding to clean everything up so the wedding party and my parents weren’t stuck with it all. She saved the day many, many times. My dress ripped big time during the pre-​wedding photos (my husband stepped on it) and came to the rescue and fixing it so no one even knew anything was wrong! Can’t praise Ann enough. I would recommend that EVERY bride hire her!

I recently met with Ann to discuss Wedding Planning. With her experience in Design, she has an eye for that «vision» and «feel» you want every event to have. Her Wedding Timeline is very thorough and is so detailed that everyone knows when and where to be. Her professionalism is admirable and I highly recommend Ann to add an extraordinary touch to your wedding or other event!

Ann planned a 40^th Surprise Birthday party for my wife in San Francisco. The event turned out to be one of the most memorable events for me and my family. Her attention to detail was great! She thought of things I wouldn’t, while keeping in mind all the things I envisioned. She was most valuable the day of the event dealing with small mishaps and timing changes. She was very easy to communicate with, and was available by email or phone whenever I needed her. I would highly recommend her to anyone planning an event.

Ann Saavedra coordinated my 150+ guests wedding at a private beach estate recently, and it was absolutely amazing. Her design background was her biggest asset in our wedding as she transformed the estate into a fairytale setting while making it our own. We hired her for wrap up package, but felt like we got so much more.
For instance, she helped me design our wedding cake, which looked like a stack of gifts. And talk about attention to detail and adding a personal touch — she personally added ribbon to the cake after we had it delivered to the wedding site to finish off the look. Another special touch was the array of candles she personally brought to decorate around the hearth and fireplace, creating a romantic mood for the room where we would have our first dance, and creating a more intimate atmosphere of of the stately great room of the mansion.
Meanwhile, I had a large wedding party — 8 bridesmaids, 7 groomsmen, 2 flower girls, 3 ring bearers, and 3 ushers! And, my husband arrived via boat as a surprise to all the guests as a bagpiper heralded him in. She radioed my then fiancé when it was time to head over by boat, which was perfect timed with our bagpiper playing off in the distance. It was a very complex program given the boat arrival and the 23 attendants. I don’t know how she pulled it off! And that’s what a bride can say when she’s hired the right person for the job.
After the wedding, we went off to shoot photos with our also amazing photographer, while Ann made sure the cocktail reception was on track and we were keeping on schedule to keep with the planned time flow for the evening.
In addition to her design expertise, she also managed (thank goodness!) our somewhat arrogant chef. On our wedding night, there was some issue about dinner and our contracted time with him, and she completely shielded me from this. I didn’t learn until after my honeymoon that there had even been an issue. He also apparently wanted to charge me more, but she handled the situation like a pro and the end result was we were not charged more, and more importantly, my evening was not interrupted by this.
A few other things worth mentioning, is that because our wedding was a destination wedding, we had 30+ guests staying at the estate for three nights, which we had to feed, entertain, etc. over the weekend. Ann helped us set up an agenda for the weekend which resulted in a Kennedy-​esque like setting where our estate guests (who were also our wedding party attendents) could relax and really enjoy their stay and have quality time with us. The guys threw the football around on the sandy beach on the estates lakefront property while the ladies sipped mimosas and caught up. On my wedding day, all of bridesmaids kept commenting about how calm I was. I can honestly say I didn’t have a single worry because I knew Ann was on top of everything.
What I can not stress enough is that Ann’s greatest strength is that she is a seasoned party planner and interior designer. The combination of the two allow her to bring her brides a unique level of expertise you wouldn’t expect from a typical wedding planner.
I loved using Ann for our wedding, and if I had to do my wedding over again, there is not one thing I would change about it. It was absolutely perfect. Ann rocks.

Ann Saavedra was our day-​of wedding coordinator. Our wedding was a great success. I felt that Ann was not adequately detail oriented for the size and complexity of our event, although ultimately everything turned out great.
Pluses:
1. Ann is friendly and professional. She made me feel special during the planning process.
2. We technically had not paid her for wedding planning– only for the day of coordination — but she was happy to meet with me at length before the wedding and also met with the florist and my sister who was involved in the planning. She made a special site visit and made helpful suggestions to my sister.
3. Ann appears to be very experienced. She thought of issues to consider during the wedding planning which I never would have thought of including considering how to position readers in the ceremony seating arrangement, where parents most likely should sit, etc. She similarly gave helpful suggestions for the order of the procession. She recommended making lists of people to pick up centerpieces, leftover cake, and other equipment from the wedding so that the day of went more smoothly. I felt that her suggestions helped us feel more relaxed on the day of the event because many things were «taken care of.»
4. When my sister discovered at the last minute that the chairs that arrived were incorrect, Ann spent time with the vendors and helped correct the problem. Behind the scenes, she took care of everything and I didn’t even know about it.
Minuses:
1. During the pre-​wedding preparation periods, I started to notice that she failed to read most of the emails I sent her or CC’ed her on to update her on changes in plans.
2. At the rehearsal I was shocked to find that she had a beautiful timeline and outline of all the details of the wedding which she didn’t seem familiar with (I heard her daughter puts the packet together for her). She was inefficient in conducting the rehearsal due to lack of familiarity with the details.
3. The day of the wedding she was often not present or readily available, even when we called her cell phone.
4. She failed to make sure corsages and bouquets were available for the photos even though we followed her timeline so she should have known when to bring them.
5. I heard afterward that she snapped at a family member who came to kindly ask why the candles for the ceremony had been removed.
6. When the time of the bouquet toss came I realized that she had not made the toss bouquet available to me and she was unavailable at that time. I ended up using my real bouquet which luckily i was ok with parting with.
Overall, I will say this– my wedding turned out beautifully. I didn’t feel that this was really because of Ann, but I think that she may have done some behind the scenes work that helped. There weren’t any major disasters, but I wondered if she would have been able to handle it if there had been. A simpler and smaller wedding may make for a different story. In addition, her strengths may be more in helping with the planning process than in the hectic day of coordination.